Clarksburg crosswalk would cost $27 million

Only in Clarksburg would it cost $27 million to get a marked crosswalk so that children can walk to school safely and conveniently. That's because the Montgomery County Department of Transportation refuses to install one until it spends $27 million on road construction.

While the residential part of Clarksburg's Cabin Branch development is proceeding, the future of the associated 2.4 million square feet of commercial development is uncertain since the Maryland Health Commission ended Adventist HealthCare's plans to open a hospital in Clarksburg.

Although the County Council recently put the next phase of Clarksburg development on hold, this was not because the Clarksburg built to date falls so far short of the 1993 Master Plan's promise. Instead, the County Council worried that construction would degrade the Ten Mile Creek watershed and further reduce water quality in WSSC's Little Seneca reservoir.

And earlier this year, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) turned down a request from Clarksburg parents to mark a crosswalk at Stringtown Road and Observation Drive. Parents in the Gateway Commons development use the unmarked crosswalk to walk their children to the elementary school that is literally within sight of their homes.

Because, he explained in an e-mail, the county will not install a marked crosswalk at this intersection until the county has built a 2-mile, multi-lane, divided road (Observation Drive Extended) between Germantown and Clarksburg.

It's bad enough that Stringtown Road did not include a marked crosswalk when the road opened in 2007. After all, the Montgomery County Planning Board approved the site plan for the Gateway Commons development in 2003, and the elementary school has been there since 1909.

Did nobody think that people living on the southeast side of the road might want to walk to the school on the northwest side of the road? Was the road's $8.8 million budget too small to pay for a marked crosswalk?

But Leggett's explanation actually makes it worse. The Stringtown Road construction project did include curb cuts and pedestrian refuges at the intersection with Observation Drive. The parents assumed, reasonably, that the county had included these pedestrian facilities so that pedestrians could use them.

But this assumption was incorrect, Leggett's e-mail explained. Rather, the reason the Stringtown Road project included the pedestrian facilities was "to minimize the expense and operational impacts on the roadway when Observation Drive [Extended] is constructed".

Observation Drive Extended is not on the county's Capital Improvement Plan. But it is possible to get a rough estimate of its construction costs, if the county were to build the road today. The similar 1.2-mile extension of Father Hurley Boulevard in Germantown opened in 2011 and cost $10.9 million, or roughly $9 million per mile. So Observation Drive Extended might cost roughly $18 million.

$8.8 million for Stringtown Road plus $18 million for Observation Drive Extended adds up to $27 million that must be spent before parents and children, in a town planned as pedestrian-oriented, can cross at a marked crosswalk on their safe, convenient walk to school.

At that cost, it's no wonder that, as Leggett's e-mail said, "[t]he County simply does not have the resources to provide crossing guards or other control measures at every potential crossing location to make them as safe as possible for everyone who wishes to use them."

Instead, these parents will have to continue to choose between crossing safely at an inconvenient, marked crosswalk and crossing conveniently at an unsafe, unmarked crosswalk.

As Leggett's e-mail explains, "When in the judgment of our engineers and school transportation professionals it is better to compromise the convenience of a pedestrian...than to potentially compromise their safety, I will back that decision. Like them I believe that installing a marked crosswalk at this location may not improve the safety of those who wish to cross there."

But why must there be this trade-off between pedestrian convenience and pedestrian safety? Surely MCDOT is capable of designing a marked crosswalk at this intersection that would allow pedestrians to cross both conveniently and safely. Such a crosswalk would, however, compromise the convenience of drivers.

The Clarksburg Master Plan says that it will "carefully guide the growth of Clarksburg from a rural settlement into a transit- and pedestrian-oriented town". Ike Leggett says that he supports "mak[ing] our area more pedestrian-friendly". MCDOTsays that the county supports improvements to "the walkability of our communities".

I've seen a variation of this logic in other jurisdictions, especially regarding bicycle lanes. The idea is yes, the road, curbs and sidewalks may be engineered for the assumed provision of safe and guided crossings/travel, but we the transportation engineers are not willing to put ourselves behind this. The argument is by adding the paint, the County is saying "yes, this is a safe place to cross, ride your bike, use the road in some manner other than a car". If an accident then occurs, the County is afraid it would assume some sort of liability for marking the road that way.

So I do not understand why the area needs 27 million. Looking at google maps it is already a 4 lane divided road, it has bike lanes. I could see how a red light could be an inconvience but the school is right there accross the street. Where do they expect parents to walk , as far as I can tell there are no side walks leading to the school.

This is BS on the county, if they expect students within one mile to walk to school (the official policy is 1.5 miles I belive) they should provide a safe way for them to do so.

I looked up this crossing on Bing Maps - the county had the forethought to include left turn bays, pedestrian refuges and bike lanes, but no crosswalks? This is an (easily fixed) engineering mistake being hidden behind the veil of "engineering judgement."

@gob: Gorilla crosswalks are bananas? I Rwanda where you got that idea.

@Jasper: Oh, I know. I'm merely in pun-tastic mode this morning. More seriously, I do actually support a certain amount of guerilla street marking, in cases like this. I do wonder what the county would have to say about it...

I've also seen the Montgomery County Transportation Department actually remove an existing painted crosswalk. There were crosswalks on all four sides of the intersection of Shady Grove Road and Gaither Road (Google air photo). The crosswalk on the south side of the intersection (crossing Shady Grove Rd.) did not have a pedestrian signal. Crossing with the green "disc" signal for automobile traffic was not an option, because a green left turn arrow was on at the same time. I sent an email to traffic operations, asking when someone was supposed to cross in that crosswalk. They responded by removing the crosswalk on that side of the intersection. I was floored.

As for the situation in Clarksburg, even without going to the lengths of painting a crosswalk, I think the parents there should organize their own crossing guards and get drivers to stop at the crosswalk (which is legally there even if it's not painted).

The cost of Observation Drive is acually a lot higher than reported in the article (by a factor of 10). It will be the most costly portion of road ever built by MoCo. It's about time the county lived up to the Master Plan or stop building anything more until the infrastructure and transportation are in place. To have children bused to the schools they can see from their houses is ridiculous (it also happens with Clarksburg High and Rocky Hill Middle).

It's incredibly common for there to not be crosswalks on all four sides of a suburban intersection. It's also incredibly common for someone on the sidepath that only runs on one side of the street to have to stand through multiple light cycles and cross the street multiple times to get to the other side. God forbid a car have to wait a few seconds for someone to walk.